"And you are mine.” he whispered back. “I am sorry you were banished to the Distinct Earth, sorry you lost the use of your wings and were shamed so badly. Do you see now how unfair your God is? To inflict such shame upon a creature so proud?"
Gloom stricken, Harmony caressed a hand down Napoleon's back. "You are unwell. This awful place…it's eating you from the inside."
Her comment seemed to hurt Napoleon physically — he gripped his guts, turned on a penny and had to restrain his shaking fist from striking her. Harmony raised her chin high and unafraid, but nothing came of it, for Kat had distracted Napoleon. The samurai's instinct to protect us caused him to step forward, as if making to lunge for Napoleon's blood. He too restrained himself, but the emperor had grown weary of the samurai's volatile instincts. "Bronze-man!" he commanded. "Teach the samurai warrior a lesson!"
"Is that necessary, sir?" asked Virgil, diplomatically.
"Very! A lesson he will never forget!"
The bronze man obeyed the order and stampeded toward Kat, who paced to the centre of the penthouse. Harmony came to block herself between the pair, but Napoleon snatched her back like elastic.
"Attack!" he screamed. "Attack now!"
The swordsman held out his weapon, making its massive weight seem light as a feather. David to Goliath, Kat introduced his opponent's sword to his, then cut down the bronze-man's neck. Unfortunately, the katana clanged feebly off his foe leaving no damage or scratch, nor fragment of shrapnel. Kat struck again, harder this time down the tanned, expressionless face, but nothing.
"That's right," said Napoleon, thrilled; "my man is impervious to your sword Kat. Guard! Bring me the samurai's head!"
On that command, the bronze soldier threw himself at Kat. The samurai swerved athletically from the mass and its hefty blade broke through the warden's desk to cut it clean down the middle.
"Come on Kat!" I cried.
The crystal chandelier jingled overhead when both warriors’ blades collided, fusing brilliant sparks over the broken desk. They held this lock of steel, but the guard was too strong, too invincible for Kat to out-brute. They separated swords and the bronze-man scored a point down Kat's wrist, causing him to drop the katana. His wakizashi useless in this match-up, Kat was defenceless, so backed away from the bronze-man as a warm glint appeared in those copper eyes.
"That's enough Napoleon!" pleaded Harmony. "Call off your guard!"
"Never!" he returned, bloodthirsty. "Kill him swordsman! Kill the Kat! Do not disappoint me!"
Kat retreated until his back was smeared against the wide windowpane. The bronze-man appeared to almost grow in front of Kat. It raised its sword for the killing strike, but the samurai moved faster than eyes. He leapt under those thick heavy legs then sprang up to snatch hold of the hanging chandelier. Crystal beads fell from the ornament as Kat swung backwards, then all his weight was forced forwards and into the bronze-man's back, sending that living statue headfirst through the glass.
Blustery winds whistled in through the newly shattered window while Kat dropped from the chandelier, wiping any crystallized specks from his shoulders. "Lesson over." he grunted, collecting his faithful katana.
"Ha!" declared Eddinray, smiling. "You have no more protection Frenchman! The upper hand is ours, sir!"
Napoleon clapped, thoroughly impressed with Kat. Eddinray however, did not impress him. Not in the slightest. "You are a fool Englishman," he started, sliding his fingers up Harmony's bare arms; "a fool to think I have or will ever lose the upper hand here. Take nothing for granted, for everything that you see…there are the lurking surprises that you do not!"
Kat aimed his sword at the warden's heart. "We are taking all that we need. Try stopping us."
Napoleon did not argue, but watched disappointingly as Harmony edged away from his touch.
"Prisoner 2020." he said, tone harsher as he examined his broken desk. "That is who you seek Mr Fox? Correct?"
"Yeah. How did you know?"
"Unfortunately," he added, rubbing the grease from his forehead; "unfortunately no soul casually walks into my Fortress and removes an inmate — this is a prison facility after all, and such precedents are dangerous things to set. I allow you entry, but escape is impossible. Quite."
"We are taking the prisoner." Kat insisted. "No negotiation."
"But haven't you come here for two prisoners?" returned Napoleon, with clever certainty. "Surely two? Yes?"
We searched amongst ourselves, Napoleon taking a moment to savour our confusion. "I know about all of you." he said now. "What each of you desires most. For instance, I know how you escaped Hell, samurai; why, you waited in limbo for two hundred years; and what you seek from God…"
"Don't!" Kat exclaimed; but unconcerned, a confident warden continued. "A cosmic conscience cannot give you what you want Kat, neither can the hollow wish of an old wizard. They cannot because your wife is not in Heaven. No, she is with us…in Hell."
Napoleon's little lips stretched to his ears, but that smile was smacked off his face when — with no grace at all — Kat snatched the scruff of his neck and dangled him out of the window. "My wife is not in Hell!" he bawled, spittle flying. "She is not!"
The rest of us watched flabbergasted. I had never seen Kat so angry, so mad, and so wildly unstable.
"Release him samurai!" cried the ghost Virgil. "There will be consequences otherwise!"
"Yuki!" chocked Napoleon, over the swirling realm he adores. "She can…be saved!"
A puzzle was being put together in my head upon hearing the name. A seat and secret shared — "Yuki, I am coming!"
After a long and pitiful shriek, Kat threw Napoleon spinning back into the penthouse, and then wilted to his knees. There, on the cold black tiles, he sobbed, crushing the window's broken glass between his fingers.
Moved by his despair, Harmony approached. She sat to stroke Kat's arm. Napoleon meanwhile recovered in the corner with Virgil's eye giving him the once over. Agitated, Napoleon ordered his servant poet from the penthouse, and he disappeared to some unknown region in Hell.
Returning to a demoralised Kat, Napoleon manoeuvred Harmony aside then bent to slither words into his ear. "In the year 1568," he begun, "a Warlord sent his best warrior to win his latest battle. Despite being a natural leader of men and grandmaster of the sword, the samurai's time on that earthly plain was over. He never returned home…"
Kat looked lost in the past, his mind transported to a stormy night and rain-swept village, where a hundred swords clashed, and men and horses fell by the dozen; himself included.
"When Yuki received word of her loving husband's death," Napoleon whispered, "she was overcome with grief."
"No." slurred Kat, crumpled in a ball.
"Yes," he continued. "Your woman stuck a dagger into her chest then bled to death on the floor. In a position similar to your own now. Perhaps you thought she passed peacefully? An old widow in her nineties?"
"Stop it!" Harmony cried.
"Suicide is an appalling act," he pressed, making light of Kat's grief; "a mortal sin. Life is a gift you see, and God gets very cross when you return it unwanted."
Defences obliterated, Kat slobbered like a baby into his bleeding palms. It was deeply disturbing to see him this way, emotion so human from a man so robotic.
"Do not believe it Kat." urged Harmony. "He is a liar and the very best of them!"
"Spare me!" griped Napoleon, guiding our eyes to his oversized fireplace. "Have a look life support! See her for yourself!"
Inside the jagged flames of that fire appeared the image of a woman Kat knew to be his wife. Yuki was in her early fifties, delicate and emaciated. Strung up by a wired noose around the neck, her hands where bound behind her back as her legs kicked at thin air. Her choked expression revealed the horror she endured, her flesh was purple and airless, and the eyeballs protruded like boiled eggs from their sockets.
"Yuki!" Kat writhed, reaching out to her pathetic image. Napoleon childishly moved to block K
at's view of the fire, and his wife. "She can't hear you." he said, full of deranged pleasure. "Prisoner 1692 hangs and suffers every second of her days and nights, for all time. Now, I ask again: Have you come to my Fortress for one prisoner…or two?"
"Let her go!" begged Harmony. "It is too cruel! Let her go, please?"
"For you Harmony?” he asked. “Is that what you want from me?"
"Yes!" she answered, without hesitation. "Do this for me Napoleon."
Interested, and clearly keen to satisfy Harmony, Napoleon sauntered to his blustery window to mull things over. There, he kicked a shard of glass to the puffy red clouds and watched it flip and fall like his bronze-man. I thought of sneaking to his back now and kicking his fat ass out the window, but how would that see the release of our two prisoners? Not forgetting those lurking surprises he mentioned.
"I will release her!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Yes! You can have the old woman. A token of…goodwill."
Presently, and on his word, the wire cut from around Yuki's neck and she dropped to soiled ground. Engrossed in the flames, we then watched her remarkable realisation that she could breathe again. The purple on her face settled a bit at a time, and the eyes receded back into her head. Her suffering seemingly over, her image was gone in a woof of smoke, and the fireplace flickered back to normal.
"Thank you Napoleon!" exhaled Harmony. "Thank-you!"
Carefully now, I approached Kat, placing my soft hand on his hard shoulder. "Your wife will be safe, my friend. We will see her out of here. I promise you."
Kat smeared the salty tears away and gripped my forearm. I pulled to his feet and here, at the top of the 9th Fortress, we brothers stood.
"You will be reunited with her." said Napoleon. "In the meantime there is important business yet to discuss."
Although happy to grant the wishes of Harmony Valour, Napoleon Bonaparte was not in the least bit amused to see her arm clung around Eddinray's. An ugly malice appeared on his face, a poisonous desire to see the Englishman put in his place. "Listen here!" he declared. "I will release the wife of the samurai! I will also release prisoner 2020 and see you leave the Fortress with my blessing…All be done!"
"If?" I asked, sceptical and hopeful at the same time. "Whatever I can do!"
"Not you Fox!" he exclaimed. "You have already sacrificed plenty in getting here — your sanity lost in the cave of a centaur — the eye carved out of your head. But what of the Englishman? What has he lost through this endeavour?"
"What about me?" pried Eddinray, standing straight.
"I am an enthusiast." Napoleon replied, nonchalantly. "A competitor and proud Frenchman! My wise and noble Father nurtured all of his children, often regaling this impressionable boy with bedtime tails of Joan of Ark and Turenne. He sent his son dreaming of the greatest battles and glory over impossible odds; the following morning I would wake with a bellyful of inspiration."
Napoleon was briefly that boy again, his eyes enjoying the memories. "When my Father died," he added, sadly, "dreams became ambitions, so I set out to realise them."
Lingering near the velvet sofa, Eddinray appeared fidgety under Napoleon's spotlight. "My life was one of supreme highs," he continued, "and one loathsome low at Waterloo. Sent to my island prison by the British, my body was slowly poisoned by those dogs then thrown to rot in an unmarked grave. A disgraceful end to a wonderful life."
"Why tell us?" I asked him. "What's the point?"
"I am offering your English friend that which I did not get — an honourable last bow. For Sir Godwin Eddinray to compete with the competitor."
Harmony let out a sharp gasp, and swiftly, Napoleon finished his proposal before further interruption. "Participate in a contest, joust with me Englishman, and your party can leave here with prisoners mentioned."
Sickly faced and weak at the knees, Eddinray sat. Harmony however, was not so feckless.
"Napoleon you are too arrogant!" she chuckled. "You always were! You cannot defeat Godwin; he is a knight who understands horses and lances better than any here. You won't stand a chance!"
Napoleon snorted into his fist. "What say you knight?" he asked, pompously dabbing his lips with a handkerchief from his pocket. "What say you to her claims?"
Eddinray now regained something of his old self. He left the sofa and approached Napoleon with broadening shoulders. "I agree…with Harmony."
"And do you love her?" he asked him; "or are you lying about that too?"
Harmony and Eddinray froze, the pair so obviously terrified of hearing the other's answer. Fortunately, one of them had an answer to Napoleon's question, thus shattered any tension with it. "I am no liar!" declared Eddinray, boldly. "And yes, sir! I do love this woman! There you have it!"
Harmony visibly quivered at his announcement, then leant against the nearest piece of furniture for support. "You do?" she asked him.
Defeating the nerves in his belly, Eddinray faced her. "From the very moment I saw you I was smitten. In awe. In love, my dear."
They exhaled simultaneous relief, and smiling, they stumbled, almost inebriated to embrace before the fireplace. Kat and I shared delighted grins from across the penthouse, but a sore looking Napoleon chewed his bottom lip bloody. "Excuse me," he interrupted, lowering his voice to a snarl. "I am not…finished."
Infant-like in his jealousy, he pried the lovers apart and had his say between them. "Tell us when you passed Englishman? Tell us that — then have the temerity to claim you are no liar!"
To this, Eddinray's body language spontaneously transformed, from an invigorated man who had received the best possible news, to a shrinking violet from his love.
"What's the matter?" asked Harmony, as his hands left her.
"Tell us!" added Napoleon, leering. "Tell us…you fool of a man!"
Weakened and withdrawn, Eddinray planted himself back on the sofa. Harmony attentively approached to sit beside him. "It's fine Godwin.” she said. “I know the truth. I saw it for myself. Watched everything on the locomotive."
"What," he said, fear obvious in his voice; "did you see?"
Harmony scrunched up her eyes to recall. "The time and landscape were unfamiliar, but it was clear you did not die a hero's death. Far from it, you lost your footing and fell drunkenly from a bridge."
Napoleon laughed aloud, his belly bouncing up and down.
"You may be ashamed Godwin!" Harmony hastened, "but an unspectacular end is the main for the majority. Nothing to be proud of, but nothing to be upset over either!"
"She must love you," Napoleon scoffed; "for despite seeing the truth with her own eyes, my life-support still refuses to accept it. Inform the rest of us, Englishman — when did you take your pratfall? The date precisely?"
"I cannot remember it…"
"Come now!" he badgered, hurrying to them at the sofa. "The 15th Century? No? The 16th perhaps? No? Surely then…the 17th?"
"Stop!" Eddinray pleaded, but Napoleon pressed on for victory. "Let us race past the 18th and 19th centuries, and further still to the 20th! Yes, now that's much more accurate!"
Frustrated annoyance spread over the Penthouse. Harmony could not wait for Eddinray to take his time now — she demanded the truth be told.
"So be it." Eddinray said, and with a huge sigh of surrender, a wet eyed and humiliated knight, confessed. "I died in the year 19 hundred and 89. The 20th century."
Harmony stood, taking slow steps away from the sofa, her plain expression revealing nothing.
"My name was Gerald," Eddinray explained, "Gerald Price. I worked as a nurse at my local elderly care home in Blackburn, England. A common nurse, that's all. I cleaned mouths, changed sheets, fluffed pillows and wiped backsides for a living. An admirable profession you might say, but hardly a heroic one."
Napoleon leapt on the opportunity to mock him. "You see? A nurse! Can you imagine him in his woman uniform, honouring the sick with incompetence!"
He laughed and laughed until his sides hurt.
"Shut up!" Kat yelled at him.
"Shut your fat mouth!"
Napoleon gradually caught his breath, if only to hear Eddinray conclude his story. "It was New Year's Eve." he stuttered. "I was due to attend a fancy dress party so rented this very…costume…for the occasion. The most expensive in the shop. After the party — sloshed of course — I slipped and fell from a bridge. In the Waiting Plain, I accepted the consequences of my wasted years and drunken folly, and was therefore sentenced to face the many trials and tribulations of the Distinct Earth. "
"Where the stupid and meek assumed he was an English knight from times long past." finished Napoleon, dusting the matter off his palms. "There is your story Harmony, and that is your knight!"
Harmony looked senseless, like a doll to the news. I meanwhile uttered the only thought to enter my head.
"The name? Of all the names to choose, why Godwin Eddinray?"
"Strangest thing Danny," he replied, "a moment before I fell headlong into the water, that name was the last thing I ever heard. It seemed to fit the costume. It all made sense somehow…"
Standing again, Eddinray outstretched his hand toward Harmony. "Forgive me?"
Stony faced, she turned her back to his hand and pleas.
"Priceless." muttered Napoleon. "The nobody playing a somebody — all very dull and pathetic."
"I wasn't naive," said Harmony, gently; "I knew you embellished the truth Godwin, but I believed your stories came from an honest place in your heart. Tell me…was nothing real? Was it all nonsense?"
Shrinking back to the sofa, Eddinray's unanswerable mouth sent Napoleon into another spell of laughter. Harmony wavered to the window to hide her broken heart, and in the centre of this melodrama, Kat and I where stuck to uncertain feet.
"Oh, I need a cigarette." said Napoleon, chortling over the breeze and cackling fire. "This has been a good night!"
Then, and with a biting grimace, Eddinray sprang from the sofa and announced -
"I will joust! I will joust with you Emperor!"
Kat and I peered, somewhat embarrassed at each other; Harmony remained unmoved at the window. Seizing the chance to see off his love rival, Napoleon pounced. "Will you joust…nurse? Are you serious? Can you ever be serious?"
The 9th Fortress Page 36